Uber launched UberPool in San Francisco. Its a way to request a ride and request to share it with another person heading … Read the rest →

]]>Lyft, Uber and Sidecar all announced new ridesharing options today revolving around carpooling.

Uber launched UberPool in San Francisco. Its a way to request a ride and request to share it with another person heading the same direction.

The key is that if they don’t find a matching rider, Uber will give you a discount on your ride. Initially, until more people start using UberPool, it will be difficult to find two people with roughly the same start location, end location and times. An app that only did ridematching would fail to match most of the time. However, with uberX providing a reliable fallback, using UberPool has no downside.

Uber claims that UberPool is part of their desire for people to ditch car ownership:

Since the early days of Uber, we’ve been excited about the idea of providing transportation so inexpensive and reliable, people can actually sell their cars.

While the UberPool idea is simple, the implications are profound. On average, uberX already costs 40% less than taxi. Imagine reducing that cost by up to another 40%! In San Francisco, how about $6 to Uber from the Castro to the Financial District? Or $10 from Sunset to SOMA? At these price points, Uber really is cost-competitive with owning a car, which is a game-changer for consumers.

UberPool has launched in private beta in San Francisco and will roll out more widely on August 15.

Also today, Sidecar announced Shareable Sidecars. They have been testing this feature in San Francisco for the last few months. Sharing a sidecar costs up to 50% less than a normal sidecar. Sidecar mentions that in many cases this is very competitive with the costs of public transit:

Now you can take Sidecar for 50% less, or just a little more than you’d pay for the metro or bus.

More than half of Sidecar riders use it for their daily commute, and Sidecar points out their value to cities:

Shared Rides are awesome for cities too. It takes cars off the road, saves space by curbing the need for parking, cuts down on traffic, slows street wear and tear and reduces pollution.

Meanwhile, Lyft launched Lyft Line today. Lyft Line is a new option in San Francisco for sharing rides with multiple people.

When using Lyft Line, you indicate your start and end points, and then Lyft searches for matching drivers and passengers. Within minutes, Lyft confirms you line and shows the price of your trip. The price is fixed, even if a matching passenger is unavailable.

Lyft claims that routes never add more than a few minutes to your travel time and that sharing a Lyft Line can cost 60% less than a normal Lyft. When using Lyft line, you can have a party of two. Lyft also suggests that if you have lots of luggage, pets or are an unaccompanied minor that you use a traditional Lyft.

UberPool, Lyft Line and Shareable Sidecars all provide lower cost, on-demand ridesharing for trips where the travel time is less important than the cost. In the case of Uber, they explicitly state that they would like to lower the cost to the point where it doesn’t make sense to own a car. These services are perfect for commutes with slightly flexible arrival times, longer distance trips, and trips to social events where travel time does not need to be minimized. Its impressive that they all launched on the same day.

$3.50 Base + first 1/5 of a mile
$0.55 per fifth of a mile ($2.75 mile)
$0.55/minute of waiting or traffic time delay
$2 airport surcharge

Uber claims that they are cheaper than taxis or any other ride sharing system in every city that UberX operates in. There are 24 cities with UberX service.

Moreover, they claim to be cheaper than the bus if you share the ride.

The reason for lowering rates is economies of scale:

The answer is in the network effects of our business. More cars and drivers mean better coverage and lower pickup times. Lower pickup times mean better economics for drivers, and thus more drivers and cars.

Uber getting cheaper means more people will use it for more types of trips, which may help futher decrease costs or improve service, as long as the supply of drivers keeps up with rider demand.

]]>http://techsportation.com/2014/01/10/uberx-lowers-fares-20/feed/0A new model for bikesharinghttp://techsportation.com/2013/10/30/a-new-model-for-bikesharing/
http://techsportation.com/2013/10/30/a-new-model-for-bikesharing/#commentsWed, 30 Oct 2013 07:28:24 +0000http://techsportation.com/?p=192San Francisco recently launched the Bay Area Bike Share system, which closely followed launches of large bike sharing systems in Chicago and New York. Bike sharing systems are growing in popularity quickly: as of May … Read the rest →]]>San Francisco recently launched the Bay Area Bike Share system, which closely followed launches of large bike sharing systems in Chicago and New York. Bike sharing systems are growing in popularity quickly: as of May 2012, there were approximately 184 bikesharing programs operating in 204 cities around the world, with 368,600 bicycles and 13,600, according to a recent MTI Funded Cycling Report.

The growth of bikesharing can be partially attributed to an increasing number of people, especially young professionals living in cities, as well as the desire for greener transportation. The cost of providing bikesharing has been lowered recently with the advances in technology surrounding bike sharing systems: GPS tracking, kiosk technology and the ubiquity of smartphones that make it easy for users to locate shared bikes (and drop off locations).

San Francisco’s bike share system doesn’t cover the entire city yet, just a few of downtown neighborhoods. However, within the section of the city that it does cover, there are frequent docking stations.

I’ve found bikesharing to be very useful in solving the “last mile” problem – San Francisco’s less-than-comprehensive transit system leaves gaps where biking is simply faster. With bikeshare stations near the four downtown BART stations, it’s easy to get to locations deep in SOMA, or towards North Beach where transit links aren’t great.

I tend to bike a lot of places anyway, and own several bikes. However, bikesharing offers the convenience of one-way trips, and the ability to “acquire” a bike anywhere I am. I find myself grabbing a bikeshare bike to connect places that I would have previously walked. Unlocking and locking the bikes takes almost no time, so even trips as short as two blocks make sense if there is a bikeshare station at both the start and end.

Bitlock was recently launched on Kickstarter. Its a smart U-lock that replaces the bike key with your smart phone. While offers some cool features and convenience for any bike user (keeping track of your trips, super fast proximity lock/unlock), I’m most excited about its ability to facilitate a new model of bikesharing.

Bitlock enables users to share their bikes with trusted friends, and those friends only need their smartphone to unlock and lock the bike. This opens up a few interesting possibilities:

Sharing your bike with a friend without needing to arrange giving them the keys
In a situation where a friend can get physical access to your bike (its locked in your accessible backyard, they have access to your house, they are a roommate), they can use the bike (with your permission) without you needing the leave keys for them, or retrieve keys.

Sharing your bike with a group of friends, and being able to use theirs
I imagine this working best in a campus situation. Through the BitLock app, you can see a map of shared bikes that you have access to (or potentially request access to). You can then use the same app to unlock and relock the bike.

Its interesting that you would not necessarily need to return the bike to the same location you got it from, and could leave it anywhere that is secure. The app then would report the location to the owner (and anyone else who might like to borrow it).

This new model can bypass the large dock and kiosk installation expenses of traditional station-based bikesharing systems. According to BitLock, it can costs upwards of $6000 per bicycle to implement these bikeshare systems in addition to on-going maintenance costs. At the same time, these systems lack flexibility in that picks up and drop offs must be a specified locations and they have the potential of full docks.

SOBI and ViaCycle offer station-less bikesharing using GPS tracking, data connections, built-in locks and solar panels. Their bikes can be locked to any bike rack. Systems like this cost much less per bike to setup, but require special bikes and monthly data fees.

BitLock enables a smaller-scale, more flexible and less expensive bike sharing system. With the flexibliity of being able to use existing bike racks, any bike can be used with BitLock. Small communities like colleges, hotels, apartments, resorts and businesses could easily deploy their own bike sharing system using any type of bike and BitLock. Any type of bike can be used: rural parks could offer mountain bikesharing systems, skate parks could offer BMX sharing and parks could offer tandem-bikesharing.

BitLock need not be limited to bikes: Any equipment that can be locked with a u-lock could be converted to sharing: canoes, kayaks, scooters and even pogo-sticks could be made into sharing systems using something like BitLock.

The cost of deploying a non-station-based sharing system is just the bicycle cost plus one BitLock (currently $99 on kickstarter). No station or parking infrastrcture is needed if there are existing bike racks available. Such a system could be very flexible as users could be allowed to pick up and drop off a bike anywhere within a specified region.

I think bikesharing in general will continue to grow in popularity, and BitLock will help enable more flexible systems in a wider variety of places than traditional citywide station-based system.

]]>http://techsportation.com/2013/10/30/a-new-model-for-bikesharing/feed/0Enterprise Car Rental acquires ride matching service Zimridehttp://techsportation.com/2013/08/05/enterprise-car-rental-acquires-ride-matching-service-zimride/
http://techsportation.com/2013/08/05/enterprise-car-rental-acquires-ride-matching-service-zimride/#commentsMon, 05 Aug 2013 23:01:03 +0000http://techsportation.com/?p=187
Last month, Enterprise Car Rental acquired Zimride – a six-year-old ride matching service. Zimride was founded by the same team that more recently created Lyft, a peer-to-peer ridesharing service.

This is the second time an established, traditional car rental company has purchased a transportation startup: Avis purchased ZipCar earlier this year for $500 million.

This move frees up Zimride founder, John Zimmer, to focus on Lyft which has been growing very rapidly and recently raised $60 million. Lyft offers on-demand ride matching using smartphones connected to drivers, while Zimride was a more traditional ride-matching service targeted at longer trips or routine commutes.

]]>http://techsportation.com/2013/08/05/enterprise-car-rental-acquires-ride-matching-service-zimride/feed/0BMW including carsharing access with vehicle purchase to encourage small electric vehicle saleshttp://techsportation.com/2013/08/05/bmw-including-carsharing-access-vehicle-purchase-encourage-small-electric-vehicle-sales/
http://techsportation.com/2013/08/05/bmw-including-carsharing-access-vehicle-purchase-encourage-small-electric-vehicle-sales/#commentsMon, 05 Aug 2013 22:45:06 +0000http://techsportation.com/?p=183Last week, BMW announced a new program to help bolster the sales of its electric vehicles: the ability to bundle carsharing access with the purchase of a vehicle. This was along with the unveiling of … Read the rest →]]>Last week, BMW announced a new program to help bolster the sales of its electric vehicles: the ability to bundle carsharing access with the purchase of a vehicle. This was along with the unveiling of their first mass-production electric car, the i3.

Most drivers use their car for solo driving with limited range (less than 150 miles) most days of the year. However, they purchase vehicles based on their estimated “peak” usage: things like driving guests around, road trips to Tahoe, hauling furniture. These peak uses likely only occur a few times per year, the rest of the time their driving profile fits perfectly with what an electric vehicle supplies.

These peak uses give people range anxiety and space anxiety – however with the addition of easy-to-use carsharing vehicle owners can “right-size” their vehicles for most of the trips while still having access to higher capacity vehicles (SUVs) when they need them.

This program has the potential to introduce carsharing to many people who haven’t considered it in the past. Its possible that some of them may find carsharing so convenient that they give up on vehicle ownership entirely and switch to carsharing (plus transit, biking and walking) for 100% of their trips.

Its also possible that other car companies will start to offer carsharing options to compete with BMW. More carsharing options exposes more people to the ability to carshare, and will likely reduce vehicle ownership, VMT or at least allow people to “right size” their vehicle purchases. As the Atlantic pointed out, there is no reason why a car dealership or car company couldn’t start bundling Zipcar memberships right now in cities where carsharing options already exist.

BMW already has experience operating carsharing services. Their Drive Now carsharing services are available throughout Germany and expanded last year to San Francisco. The Drive Now service operates like Zipcar, but allows one-way trips and has airport locations as well, all while driving a BMW.

]]>Today FlightCar launched a full-service peer-to-peer carsharing option for car owners who don’t need their cars more than 4 days per month.

FlightCar Monthly offers car owners a guaranteed payment between $150 and $400/month, regardless of if their car is rented. Its a full-service program: car owners don’t need to do anything between rentals or deal with other drivers, FlightCar handles that. FlightCar offers free vehicle pickup, monthly auto-renewal, $1 million in insurance, town car service, and a car wash. Owners can use their car up to 4 days per month completely free. Accessing your can required a BART or CalTrain ride to SFO/Millbrae where FlightCar will meet you with a towncar, or alternatively, they will drive the car to your house for a $20 fee.

FlightCar Monthly is currently in beta. There are no signup fees, but all vehicles must be approved. It is available in both Boston and San Francisco. Mileage is limited to 1200 miles/month, with every additional mile being reimbursed at $0.35/mile.

This service will be useful for car owners going on long trips or who spend only part of their time in the Bay Area or Boston and don’t want the hassle of storing their car while gone (and would like to actually earn income on their vehicle). For those with shorter trips, Flight Car’s traditional service is still available.

]]>http://techsportation.com/2013/08/05/flightcar-launches-monthly-service-car-owners-guaranteed-payments/feed/0Uber launching a fleet of boats in San Francisco (one day only)http://techsportation.com/2013/08/03/uber-launching-fleet-boats-san-francisco-one-day-only/
http://techsportation.com/2013/08/03/uber-launching-fleet-boats-san-francisco-one-day-only/#commentsSat, 03 Aug 2013 00:07:12 +0000http://techsportation.com/?p=174Coinciding with the potential second BART strike on Monday, August 5, Uber is providing boat service between San Francisco and the East Bay. The service will be available one day only.

]]>http://techsportation.com/2013/08/03/uber-launching-fleet-boats-san-francisco-one-day-only/feed/1FlightCar challenged by San Francisco and SFOhttp://techsportation.com/2013/07/11/flightcar-challenged-san-francisco-sfo/
http://techsportation.com/2013/07/11/flightcar-challenged-san-francisco-sfo/#commentsThu, 11 Jul 2013 01:57:58 +0000http://techsportation.com/?p=166Peer-to-peer car-sharing company FlightCar has a nifty business model: combine the need for airport parking and airport car rental into a company the facilitates the sharing of resources. I’ve written about them a few times. … Read the rest →]]>Peer-to-peer car-sharing company FlightCar has a nifty business model: combine the need for airport parking and airport car rental into a company the facilitates the sharing of resources. I’ve written about them a fewtimes. The basics: Car owners get free airport parking, a car cleaning and a gas card, while visitors get inexpensive car rental and a wide array of vehicle types to choose from.

Last month, the City of San Francisco and the San Francisco International Airport formally filed a complaint against FlightCar in court. They want FlightCar to pay as if they were an airport car rental company, and are seeking 11.1 percent of FlightCar’s profits and $20 per rental. FlightCar currently uses a contract limo service to deliver car owners and renters to and from the airport which requires them to pay $3.65 per trip to the airport. A single rental requires four trips: 2 pick ups and 2 drop offs, so every rental results in $14.60 in payments to the airport.

This move by the City of San Francisco and SFO signals to other startups that they are not interested in innovative solutions to transportation and infrastructure problems. Its important that the Bay Area continue to be the location where new technology is launched and incubated, and not seen as over-regulated or a place where outdated regulations are enforced to prop up existing business models.

For many car-owners and car-renters, FlightCar will be the first time they use a car-sharing service. Car-sharing has been shown to reduce vehicle miles traveled and car ownership because it makes not owning a car a more convenient option. Exposing more people to car-sharing will likely lead to increased use of car-sharing.

]]>http://techsportation.com/2013/07/11/flightcar-challenged-san-francisco-sfo/feed/0Lyft, sidecar and Uber get a Cease-and-Desist letter from Los Angeles DOThttp://techsportation.com/2013/07/08/lyft-sidecar-uber-cease-and-desist-letter-los-angeles-dot/
http://techsportation.com/2013/07/08/lyft-sidecar-uber-cease-and-desist-letter-los-angeles-dot/#commentsMon, 08 Jul 2013 21:39:15 +0000http://techsportation.com/?p=156Peer-to-peer ridesharing services have already had many legal challenges as they disrupt existing transportation services and work within regulations that were not written with them in mind.

]]>Peer-to-peer ridesharing services have already had many legal challenges as they disrupt existing transportation services and work within regulations that were not written with them in mind.

On June 26, Lyft, Sidecar and Uber received cease-and-desist letters from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT). (full letters here, here, and here). They already went through a similar situation with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) last year. After negotiating with the CPUC, an agreement was reached in January of this year allowing allthreecompanies to operate in the State of California.

LADOT threatened in the cease-and-desist letter that it would arrest drivers and impound their cars for up to 30 days, although this has not happened yet. All three companies continue to operate in Los Angeles. Lyft is asking anyone who enjoys using their service in Los Angeles to contact key city officials to voice support.

In spite of any California setbacks, Lyft announced their San Diego launch on July 3rd. Lyft now operates in three California cities: San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles as well as Boston, New York and Chicago.

]]>http://techsportation.com/2013/07/08/lyft-sidecar-uber-cease-and-desist-letter-los-angeles-dot/feed/0Uber experments with Helicopters: UberChopper is bornhttp://techsportation.com/2013/07/08/uber-experments-helicopters-uberchopper-born/
http://techsportation.com/2013/07/08/uber-experments-helicopters-uberchopper-born/#commentsMon, 08 Jul 2013 20:50:43 +0000http://techsportation.com/?p=152Last week, as part of a promotion about summer service between New York City and the Hamptons, Uber offered one-way helicopter rides between New York City heliports and the Hamptons. An SUV ride for up … Read the rest →]]>Last week, as part of a promotion about summer service between New York City and the Hamptons, Uber offered one-way helicopter rides between New York City heliports and the Hamptons. An SUV ride for up to five people to and from the helipads on both ends of the trip was included.

A one-way UberChopper ride for up to 5 people cost a flat $3000, while a ride in a vehicle to the Hamptons was only $300, $400 or $500 for uberX, uber and uberSUV respectively. The helicopter service was only offered for one day (July 3) while the regular uber service to the hamptons will be offered for the rest of the summer.

This is an interesting move for Uber – uberChopper is clearly catering to the uberWealthy while at the new lower uberX rates are catering to the budget-conscious as a cheaper alternative to taxis.